Traditional Wisdom... LO8806

John Constantine (rainbird@trail.com)
Thu, 01 Aug 1996 11:22:59 -0700

Replying to LO8773 --

John Woods wrote:
>
> Mary Apodaca asks:
> >I've just received a request from an organization that considers itself an
> >LO requesting a defense or rejection of the following statement:
> >
> >"It is traditional wisdom in the business world that a coporation (sic) is only
> >as good as the people it employs."
> >
> >How would you react to this statement--in writing, that is?
>
> I do not think this is traditional or conventional wisdom. We have a
> great tendency to objectify the world, including our organizations, and we
> often come to believe they are different from the people who make them up.
> -snip-
> The approach of traditional management is not based on a clear
> understanding of the systems view and is oriented toward drawing
> conclusions from events and blaming or praising individuals when things go
> wrong or right. This approach suggests that it is rational to take
> advantage of people for the good of the organization. There is a tendency
> to consider the people who make up the organization and the organization
> to be two separate entities.
>
> -snip-
>
> As far as I am concerned such an approach is based on a false premise.
> Human beings come together to create organizations to fulfill the vast
> variety of human needs, wants, and desires. To really prosper,
> enlightened managers realize that the organization and the people who make
> up the organization are the same thing.
>
>-snip-
>
> In other words, they intuitively or explicitly understand that the organization is a
> human-created system.
>
> -snip-
>
> So we might say another value of the systems view of organization is that
> it reminds us that human organizations are really systems of people,
> -snip-
> That's the best way to prosper.
>
> Not only that, but -snip- we can also appreciate that such an approach helps
> people identify with the organization and know that their personal welfare
> is tied to that of the organization.
>
> But is this traditional wisdom? By traditional behavior I don't think so.

I read what John has written in re Mary's Question.

I think, like so many postings, it raises a number of much deeper,
conflicting and very troubling issues, as did Mary's initial post.

I feel that there are implications:

1. the apparent need for definition in our communications, e.g.
"traditional", "wisdom", "corporation", "good", "it", "employs".

(From Webster's: traditional = "passing down of elements of a culture from
generation to generation, especially by oral communication..."; wisdom =
"understanding of what is true, right or lasting"; corporation = "a body
of persons granted a charter legally recognizing them as a separate entity
having its own rights, priveleges and liabilities distinct from those of
its members; good = "having positive or desirable qualities, not bad or
poor"; it = "used to represent the thing or nonhuman being last mentioned
or implied"; employs = "to use in some process or effort; put to service"

>From this information I would respond to John (and thus to Mary) that:
traditions may or may not "happen" among and between human organizations
(cultures), or nonhuman entities (corporations) but the one (human) does
not have to be the other (nonhuman).

2. It may actually be creating more and continual confusion to regard
corporations as groups of persons who are "the same" as its members,
particularly when it comes to having wisdom (understanding what is true,
right or lasting). Or when it comes to the nonhuman entity being "as
good". In Mary's posting the corporation is identified as an "it", not as
a "we" or "us", or even a "they".

3. We may be asking too much of an "it" to be acting as if "it" has human
characteristics, leading to a range of meaning when "it employs" persons,
mule trains, mainframes, et al, for "its" own benefit. When "it" decides
to downsize, it is for "its" own purposes. (US WEST just announced today a
large reduction in "its" workforce; "its" corporate communication stated
that the reductions would be in the most experienced, knowledgable,
resourceful areas, those with the ability to ACT and BE mentors, that is,
management. Humans as resources, humans as research areas, humans who can
think, plan, create and implement, humans who can provide benefit; no
longer "employed", used in some process or effort or put to service. Would
we think of such an example as a LEARNING ORGANIZATION?

4. The corporation is not MEANT to be the same as the people who make it
up, it is INTENDED/EXPECTED/ to be different, not possessing the same
goals, etc., as those who make it up. What does that mean for those who
struggle with nonhuman entities daily, who strive for progress in moving
towards a Learning Organization?

5. I want to offer a scenario related to John's response:

"It takes a group (normally nine on each side, sometimes fewer depending
on the size of the neighborhood) to get together and play a game called
baseball. We (the members) can usually figure out among ourselves who can
(or who wants to) play which position. This is (or can be) a learning
organization in simple form.

Girls and boys can play. Hey, you don't even need gloves. We don't even
need bases, we can use sneakers to make them up in the dirt. We even have
these rules to make it fair; if you don't know them yet, you will over
time...lots of people are there to help. Sometimes even starting out can
be fun. After all, we're not pros when we start, right? (You get better as
you go along anyway. It's fun! It's a game!)

You start out at seven-thirty on a weekend and play til it's dark. You can
play three innings, or seven, or nine (that's what the rules call for),
but it doesn't really matter. There's this rule that we have to play til
somebody "wins", so we actually get to have MORE fun if NOBODY does...WHAT
A DEAL!!

Sometimes you don't even keep score, but you play like crazy. Hey, PLAYING
THE GAME IS FUN!

Over time some players get better, so Jane gets to be a shortstop cause
she's the fastest one going to her right. Bob gets to be first baseman
cause he's real tall and can stretch for the low hops I throw from third.
We really got good at knowing which balls were foul and which weren't. We
made sure we didn't try to cheat. That made it a lot more fun that way.
That one year I think we won more than we lost, but I can't remember for
sure...I was having too much fun PLAYING THE GAME. I think we actually
PAID to use that one good practice field, we were having so much fun.

Then I don' know what happened but some of the members went off to school
and college and all that. Some of the members got offers to turn pro, can
you believe it? They signed contracts and everything. And the coaches
started to tell them the rules were a little different now that they were
making money. They HAD to hit over .300 with 30 home runs or they would be
traded. Oh, and Jimmy told me on the phone that he didn't have to say that
he trapped the ball in his glove, that in fact he was expected to act as
if he didn't trap it. And if he saw the first baseman's foot too close to
the bag, he should step on it to get that guy out of the game.

He also told me that he was "traded" to some other team at the other side
of the country. He had to move his wife and family too. The worst thing he
said was that it wasn't the same game he remembered. It just wasn't as
much fun anymore. And he didn't like having to cheat either. But when he
told the manager of the team, he was told "I'm glad you told me now, I
need to get a replacement fast." He was "sold" the next day...to another
team back on the OTHER side of the country.

His wife called me to say that he wrote me a letter telling me he always
talked about how he loved the game, how he loved to be with the other
members, how he didn't even worry about dropping a ball, since it was part
of the game anyway, and we all made mistakes.

But she said that the worst thing he said was that he couldn't handle NOT
PLAYING FAIR. It just didn't make it fun anymore. And being traded and
sold like a piece of butcher meat made him feel so degraded that he lost
all his confidence. Last week he had slipped when going for a pop-up and
tore his hamstring. He couldn't play the game any more, especially at his
age.

She told me that over the weekend he had killed himself in despair. As I
looked through all the scrapbooks I came upon a page with our picture
together from years ago. Under it was titled "A GAME WELL PLAYED", in view
of the fact that we had won the championship that day, and IT WAS FUN.

In my view, our culture needs to change, and perhaps this membership can
aid in making that change. There can and should be joy in what we do. Is
this the "traditional wisdom"? Probably not, but it had better become so.

Is the corporation "only as good as the people it employs"? Yes, if "it"
treats them as cannon fodder, or scap paper for the shredder. We as a
society have let the nonhuman take over and control the human, and we are
"reaping the whirlwind". The prevailing culture promotes all the capital
sins pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth. The
Learning Organization lives and breathes, acts and ponders on a different
plane. It believes in A GAME WELL PLAYED, by all members of the
organization, but especially management.

Better to have the game tied at nine innings or nineteen or twenty-nine,
then to have one "win" and one "loss".

-- 

Sincere apologies for the length, John Constantine Rainbird Management Consulting Santa Fe, NM http://www.trail.com/~rainbird

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>